My Detective Has Gone Sane!
by weiss kittyn
Summary: Sequel to My Son Has Lost His Mind. When L returns, what madness awaits?  Poor Souichiro looks on in horror as the insanity unfolds.  Another mild attempt at humor.


"... Excuse me?"

L stared down at his cell phone as though it had insulted him, eyes wide. It blinked back at him merrily, announcing quietly that the call had been lost. "Watari, please hurry. I think something may have happened to Raito-kun."

He turned his attention to the window, and watched the buildings and people sweep past. Outwardly, he appeared calm and relaxed. Inwardly a storm was raging.

_Lost his mind? What does that mean? Was he injured? Perhaps he redecorated. Maybe he admitted to being Kira? So many questions. What does that mean, he's lost his mind? How?! Should I call Souichiro back? Would he answer? Perhaps he's tending to his son. What if Raito was admitted to the hospital? What if he's been locked up in a mental facility? Would they do that without talking to me first?_

"L, we're here," Watari's voice intruded quietly. L jumped in spite of himself, and realized that indeed they had arrived. He pushed open the door and didn't even bother to close it behind him, knowing that it would waste valuable time that could be spent seeing to Raito.

He rushed up the stairs, not even bothering with the elevator, and burst out through the door with enough time to see Souichiro yank his head back out of the room and start mumbling to himself.

"Yagami-san, Raito-kun..."

"In there," Souichiro said, pointing with a shaky hand. L was half afraid the man would have a heart attack on the spot. Steeling himself, he poked his head in, and looked around.

Raito was no where to be seen. He stepped into the room fully, and frowned.

"Raito-ku-" At the sound of his voice, the chair moved and Raito looked up at him with wide eyes.

For a long moment, the two simply stared at one another, unable to process the sight. Raito was hunched over his computer in jeans and a loose, long-sleeved shirt. He had bags under his eyes from not sleeping, and L was almost horrified to see a half-eaten cake sitting next to him. How dare he start eating and not finish it! The poor dear, he thought, then immediately realigned his thoughts onto Raito.

"Raito-kun... you're..." _He looks like me, dressed like that. Sitting like that. Do I really look like that when I sit? He'd know, wouldn't he?_

"Ahh.. Ryuuzaki! You said you'd be back within a week! That was a month ago!" Raito sounded... wifely, L thought.

"I apologize, Raito-kun, it took longer than we expected-"

"I'll say! A month! You couldn't have called? You couldn't have _emailed_ me? Here I am, all alone, don't even know if you're still _ALIVE_ and then you have the gall to just waltz in here as though disappearing for a month is completely normal!"

L straightened, realizing that he was hunching again. When the younger man stepped lightly off the chair, L realized that straightening his back made him taller, and he looked down at Raito, waiting for the next words.

"I said I'm sorry, Raito, but it was too busy-"

"Too busy to pick up your damn cell phone and press a few buttons?" Raito demanded, standing up on his tip-toes to bring himself up to eye level with L. This seemed to click in his mind, and he suddenly took a long look at L as though seeing him for the first time.

"When did you get so tall?" he wanted to know, leaving off his verbal attack. L barely contained his smirk.

"I've always been tall, Raito," he said, quickly assimilating the 'New Raito' and fitting him into his view of the world. "You're just getting shorter." That said, he turned around, and left the room to find Watari and review the footage of the past month.

Behind him, he could hear Raito swearing, and he laughed.

* * *

Over the course of the next few days, L observed a marked change in Raito's behavioral patterns. The younger man would start to step into his chair, realize what he was doing, and then sit down grumpily as though L's presence were bothersome to him.

He found himself being matched at night for staying up late, and the other boy didn't seem sleep-deprived at all in the morning, despite getting up as early as ever.

Conversely, this made the detective want to sleep more than he usually did, and since they had never been re-cuffed together, he decided that he would.

The first night, he made a huge show of being tired; yawning extravagently, stretching, pretending to drop off into naps. Finally, around midnight, Raito got sick of it.

"If you're so tired, why don't you go to bed?" he snapped, and L regarded him with hooded eyes.

"I think I will. Coming, Raito-kun?" Raito glued his eyes back onto the computer screen, a faint smirk touching his lips.

"No thanks. Go ahead and turn the light off, I know my way around in the dark." They said their goodnights, and L retired to the bedroom.

Laying down was more difficult than he'd originally thought it would be, as he wasn't _really_ tired. Still, he relaxed, and let his mind wander. It wasn't for another four and a half hours that Raito joined him. The younger man simply lay down in the sweater and jeans he'd been wearing and dropped into sleep.

L scowled for a moment, irritated that Raito would have such an easy time of getting to sleep when he himself was still laying here, wide awake. With Raito next to him, however, rest came easier and it wasn't long before he too was asleep.

* * *

"Ryuuzaki. Ryuuzaki-kun. Wake up, we're late."

L made no response, simply rolling over and pulling the covers back up around his ears. There was a hefty sigh, and then the covers abruptly vanished, leaving L exposed to the chill air. Opening one eye, he glared balefully at Raito. "Is there a reason you've stolen my blankets?" he asked, and Raito scowled back at him.

"It's nine in the morning, why aren't you up yet?" He sounded almost chipper, and L groaned quietly.

"Because I was still sleeping, obviously," he grouched. "Why are you waking me up now?"

"Kira killed again," Raito said cheerfully. "And Watari has brought you some cake."

"It's too early for cake," L said, feeling grumpy, and didn't even register his own words until Raito started feeling up his forehead.

"You fell asleep at midnight, you don't want cake, what the hell is wrong with you? Do you need to take the day off? You didn't pick anything weird up in America, did you?" Raito stared at him reproachfully, as though it was his own fault if he'd contracted some disease overseas.

"I don't believe I picked anything up, Raito-kun," L replied quietly, pretending to think about it. He simply didn't want cake. That wasn't to say he didn't want something sweet... in fact, large, fluffy, syrupy pancakes sounded absolutely delicious.

He stood up, resigning himself to being awake, and stretched out to his full height before picking up his phone and calling Watari. "If it's not too much trouble, I'd like buttermilk pancakes and... strawberry syrup."

"It's no trouble at all," Watari replied, hanging up. L looked down at Raito, still getting used to the feeling of superiority being taller brought him.

_If I'd known it was this easy, I'd've started standing up straighter ages ago,_ he mused, watching as Raito hunched his shoulders.

They decided on having breakfast in the computer room; Raito had been up for hours, and had a lot to brief L on the new murder by Kira. In a free moment, L reviewed the tapes, just to make certain that Raito hadn't done anything suspicious while he was asleep.

L was almost surprised to find that Raito had done nothing out of the ordinary. He'd awoken at seven, filched cake from the fridge, and taken advantage of being alone to sit with his knees drawn up around his chest while he checked over the things that had happened in three hours since he'd left his computer last. At seven thirty he'd received the email announcing another death by Kira, and started working on it. He'd worked on it steadily for another two and a half hours before finally getting up to waken L.

"Are you listening to me?" Raito asked contemptuously. L glanced over at him, taking in his appearance.

_I think I'll shock the hell out of him today,_ he thought to himself, then shook his head. "I'm sorry Raito-kun, my thoughts wandered off by themselves. Please repeat yourself?"

"Are you sure they're big enough to be let out on their own?" Raito asked snidely. For a moment, L thought that that was a repeat of what he'd just said, before it connected in his brain that he was referring to L's thoughts.

"Quite sure, Raito-kun," L said amiably, experience telling him that the best way to deal with a grouchy Raito was to be as cheerful and perky as he could possibly get.

Watari's image flashed up on his screen. "Pardon the intrusion, L, but I was hoping to remind you about the meeting you have at noon? We'll need to leave shortly to arrive with enough time to get organized before it starts."

"Understood, Watari," L said, and saved his work before shutting his computer down. "Raito-kun, you'll be alright here alone, won't you? Matsuda said he would come in when he had time, but-"

"That's completely unreliable," Raito finished. L shifted so that his feet were touching the ground, and began playing with the wheels on his computer chair. It was entertaining enough that he made a mental note about it to himself for later, before he stood up and stretched out.

"I'm going to go change," he said conversationally, and wandered back into the bedroom. Raito grunted an affirmative, and less than a minute later, shouted,

"What?!" at him through the walls.

L ignored him in favour of surveying his closet. It had been a long time since he'd put on anything but his white shirt and blue jeans...

Smirking an evil little smirk, he reached past the hangers filled with long-sleeved white tee-shirts, and into the very back of the closet.

* * *

When L walked out Raito nearly dismissed him as someone else; the double-take he did to get a better look at the detective would be a warm fuzzy memory of L's for a long time. He couldn't get his hair to obey at all; it was still the wild mess it usually was. However, it was offset by a light brown pair of slacks and a matching jacket, with a buttoned-down white shirt and a tie underneath. L jammed his hands into his pockets, and stood straighter.

"What do you think, Raito-kun? Do you think it'll make a good impression on the delegates?"

Raito visibly swallowed. "I-it looks fantastic, Ryuuzaki. You ... you look incredible."

L bestowed a genuine smile on him for his un-faked reaction, and as he headed out the door, smirked.

* * *

Souichiro sat in the corner of the room beside Watari, watching the cameras intently. He felt sure that even without Kira operating full time he was about to have a heart attack, and he considered the changes that had come about in the last few months.

Ryuzaki and his son seemed to have come even closer together than they had been when they were chained together. Then, of course, there was the idea that they'd become so close that they'd switched altogether; how else was one to explain Raito's sudden need for cake and baggy jeans?

And Ryuzaki... Words alone were not enough to describe the changes that had overcome the detective. It was like looking at an entirely different person, when he sat normally and wore suits like that. He was even standing up straight, and that was somehow the worst of all!

Souichiro felt cheated. "L was supposed to come back, and fix Raito! Not get weird himself!"

**END**

Poor Souichiro. XDD The response to My Son Has Lost His Mind was _incredible_!! Thank you SO MUCH to everyone who reviewed it!!


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